By Femi Ogunshola
A group of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) say it will engage the 10th National Assembly (NASS) to see to the passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) as a strong measure to bring sanity to the fiscal space.
Mrs Regina Udo, the Project Manager, Growth Initiatives for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT), said this in a statement in Abuja on Friday.
She decried Nigeria’s public debt profile of N87 trillion, describing it as unsustainable and a clarion call to reform the public finance management system.
She called on the Federal and State Governments to institute urgent measures to cut waste, inefficiencies and corruption to save the country from collapse.
According to her, the huge public debt profile has been encouraged by a weak revenue mobilisation, poor remittance culture and corruption in public expenditure.
She said citizens and stakeholders across public, private and non-governmental sectors would be mobilised to address the failing fiscal health of the nation.
She said the group would also advocate for implementing the FRA 2007 Act at the national and sub-national levels, especially as it relate to debt management and revenue remittances to government coffers.
She said the group would build on some of the gains recorded in the first year of implementation which include providing technical support on public projects monitoring and evaluation.
This, she said, would be through the ConsTrack civic technology tool built and deployed by Order Paper.
“To achieve the advocacy goal of entrenching fiscal responsibility in the public sphere, the GIFT project would be implementing several activities which are designed to impact change.
According to her, this is by working with national assembly to ensure passage of the FRA amendment bill and enforce extant provisions relating to debt and borrowing by states and federal governments.
She said the group would also embark on intensive citizen engagement activities to sensitise the general public on the need to demand transparency and accountability from the government. (NAN)
